Posts tagged with Facebook Places

For years, privacy issues have dogged the world's largest social network, Facebook.

From changes that have gradually made the once-closed network more open to the world to advertising programs that were are little too creepy for comfort, Facebook arguably has more experience dealing with privacy flubs than any other company in the world.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Facebook continues to tweak its privacy features, as it preparing to do in a big way soon.

Location-based services like Foursquare saw their popularity increase
dramatically in 2010, and along with that popularity came plenty of
press attention. To some, location-based services may represent the holy
grail of mobile marketing for brick-and-mortar businesses.

But are brick-and-mortar marketers overestimating how much these services can help them?

As a big fan of location-based applications (I'm currently 'checking in' at various locations on five different apps...!) I have of course been watching the launch and subsequent spread of Facebook Places with great interest.

Now that the first batch of dust has had a chance to settle, I wanted to look in a bit more detail at some of the hurdles 'Places' may face in the coming months, if past experience is to be believed.

Five years ago, one of the last things an entrepreneur with a hot consumer internet startup wanted to hear was "Google is launching a new service just like yours." It's 2010, and that has changed to "Facebook is launching a new service just like yours."

But that's precisely what Dennis Crowley, the founder of the increasingly popular location-based service Foursquare, recently heard.